Submitted by Raj Kumar Thippani, Tata Consultancy Services Limited
This technique covers how to to migrate/switch the Impromptu Query Definition (IQD) to Package Data Source in IBM Cognos Transformer without impacting the existing structure of the Model and the Data Source Query Definition.
This technique will help when decommissioning IQD Data Sources smoothly and can leverage the new and better features available with IBM Cognos Package Data Sources like Security, Prompts, Governors etc.,
The scope of this technique is... [Continue Reading]

Submitted by Rhonda Jeshi
The aim of the IBM AuditDBCleanup tool is to provide customers with easy cleanup capabilities of their IBM Cognos audit logging database, allowing old database records to be deleted regularly based on a timestamp.
Benefits
Supported databases are all the conformance audit logging databases: DB2, Informix, Oracle, SQL Server, and Sybase.
Can be used on Windows and UNIX in two ways: via User Interface or via command line.
Takes full advantage of the... [Continue Reading]

The IBM Knowledge Center BETA is live on ibm.com. You can access IBM Knowledge Center here:
http://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/
The BETA will run until the end of February 2014.
Improving your technical content experience
IBM Knowledge Center is our new technology designed to bring IBM's technical publications together in a single location, and will replace our individual IBM Information Centers.
For this release, we simplified the user experience, improved search, and refined the overall experience... [Continue Reading]

The IBM Cognos Visualization Customizer brings a new level of flexibility to the visualizations available through IBM Business Analytics offerings.
This no-charge, ‘as is’ tool provides an accessible user experience to edit and customize the JSON description of IBM Rapidly Adaptive Visualization Engine (RAVE) based visualizations.
A spectrum of changes can be made to visualizations ranging from customizing visualization color palettes, to fonts and labels to adding or changing chart icons.
Questions... [Continue Reading]

This new Proven Practices document entitled - Scripting Basic IBM Cognos 10 Report Execution Using LoadRunner - is intended for individuals using LoadRunner to drive performance, scalability and stability tests for IBM Cognos 10. The topic covered is the action of executing simple reports in IBM Cognos Viewer.
In general, the concepts should be applicable to all IBM Cognos 10 production versions. The code examples will be specific to IBM Cognos 10 BI versions 10.1.1, 10.2 and 10.2.1. All script... [Continue Reading]

The following example is a demo from the IBM Cognos TM1: Create Scorecards (v10.2) one-day instructor-led course. This course teaches scorecard developers how to create scorecarding solutions in TM1.
Participants learn how to create all of the necessary scorecarding objects such as metrics cubes, diagrams, and maps, deploy the solution to the Web for end-user consumption, and create an engaging dashboard presentation for the solution. If you would like to know more about this training course or other... [Continue Reading]

With notes from Patrick O'Connor, Communications Strategist for the IBM Electronic Support Adoption Team
Even though the new IBM Support Portal is only a couple of months old, IBM's just deployed a series of improvements to make this support site even better!
You can now see all of IBM's product groups immediately when you click Browse for a product . You do not need to know whether IBM classifies a product as hardware or software. Instead, the categories of products appear alphabetically... [Continue Reading]

With notes from Patrick O'Connor, Communications Strategist for the IBM Electronic Support Adoption Team
When IBM deployed the new IBM Support Portal at the end of October, we added a new feature under the Common support links area - the Electronic Support forum to help clients better utilize this new Support Portal plus all of the other numerous IBM Electronic Support sites and online tools.
This new forum is moderated by the IBM Electronic Support team .
Join the discussions or ask a question... [Continue Reading]

If your life's work is providing technical solutions to support business processes and employees, you won't want to miss IBM Connect 2014 . You will find the deep-dive content you need to drive innovation and connect your team in new ways:
Attend the Lotusphere Technical program, the single place to get everything you need to maximize your current IT investment. Nowhere else can you learn about the latest collaboration and social technologies from industry experts, as well as from each other.
Get a a glimpse... [Continue Reading]

May 18 - 21, 2014 | JW Marriott Grande Lakes, Orlando, Florida
Registration and call for papers in now open for Vision 2014 .
Vision 2014 is the premier global conference for finance, risk management, and sales compensation professionals. In three information-packed days, you can see how IBM Business Analytics solutions help you drive profitable growth, manage risk and optimize performance.
With more than 120 sessions and workshops to choose from - plus the latest product demos - Vision 2014 offers you an in-depth... [Continue Reading]

CEOs indicate that technology is the single most important external force shaping their organization’s future. Disruptive technologies such as mobility, cloud, social media, and big data and analytics are not just part of the infrastructure needed to execute a business strategy. They are what make entirely new strategies possible. This session will describe how Finance organizations should be thinking about these new capabilities to help the enterprise drive greater agility, business insight and better outcomes.
After this webinar,... [Continue Reading]

Submitted by Mitesh Joshi, Tata Consultancy Services
This technique uses Time Partition cube accessed through Data source connection defined for each partitioned file/folder for Time dimensional function usage in historical time reporting.
There are two steps -
Time Partitioned Cube on Time dimension member ( Based on Cognos Proven Practices)
Data Source Creation with more than one source inside Cognos administration
Time Partitioned Cube
A time-based partitioned... [Continue Reading]

Submitted by David Stewart, Knowledge Management Lead, Business Analytics Support
A new streamlined version of the IBM Support Portal was released at the end of October with a number of improvements and a simplified UI. The metrics collected to date have shown us that very few clients had more than one product configured and the result was a very busy UI that did not work for the vast majority of end users. With this new release, you can quickly look-up a product... [Continue Reading]

IBM Cognos TM1 is an enterprise planning software platform that can transform your entire planning cycle, from target setting and budgeting to reporting, scorecarding, analysis and forecasting.
The following example is a workshop from the IBM Cognos TM1: Analyze and Share Data (v10.2) three-day instructor-led course available in a classroom or online environment. This course is designed to teach analysts how to use TM1 to analyze data to discover trends and exceptions, create and customize reports and templates, and contribute to plans.... [Continue Reading]

The Analytics Education Series consists of a series of lectures presented by IBM experts introducing you to various analytical methods. This curriculum is focused on the science, not the products, as we're interested in providing you with descriptions of the purpose and science behind these methods. It's a veritable 360 degree review of analytics - and at no cost to you!
In this series we'll introduce you to many exciting topics such as data visualization, OLAP, descriptive and comparative... [Continue Reading]

When ricocheting a solution that involves analytics, the mainframe might not be the first platform that comes to mind. However, the IBM® System z® group has developed some innovative solutions that include the well-respected mainframe benefits. This book describes a workshop that demonstrates the use of real-time advanced analytics for enhancing core banking decisions using a loan origination example. The workshop is a live hands-on experience of the entire process from analytics modeling to deployment of real-time... [Continue Reading]

Here's a list of some of the social media and web resources available during IOD 2013 -
Review ibmiodhub.com daily - great content - all the latest updates, blog posts, forums, buzz - from more than 200 contributors
Watch the opening general sessions and Forum keynotes every day on the IOD Livestream Channel
Watch interviews with IBM clients and executives by theCube on the Wikibon blog .
Here are the usual suspects:
IOD on Twitter
IOD on Facebook
... [Continue Reading]

Submitted by Denis Patenaude, Information Developer, Business Analytics
We all share a common goal: to keep our customers happy - or at least minimize their displeasure and frustration. Recently, Information Development (ID) has undertaken an initiative to work with Customer Support to see if we could combine our efforts. By working cooperatively, we wanted to demonstrate that the existing product documentation could benefit by incremental improvement, and that the data gathered by Customer Support (CS) had value in the wider realm of IBM... [Continue Reading]

Check out this video on Youtube.
The IBM Support Portal, your starting point for all things support related, got a major overhaul on October 31st . Despite the date, it's nothing to be afraid of.
The new release of Support Portal, called r9, brings with it a cleaner user interface by consolidating functions and combining content to minimize the number of modules on the screen. Also, functions that you use most frequently, like product lookup and search, are now at the top and center... [Continue Reading]

The IBM Theme Designer (TD) allows themes, styles or skins to be created for use within the IBM Cognos Connection portal. In this document, the terms themes, styles and skins can all be used interchangeably.
Benefits
Ability to easily modify the appearance of Cognos BI product suite.
Default images can be edited, created from scratch, and saved to a new directory and immediately used by Theme Designer.
Ability to re-brand the product to follow your own brand guidelines, so that it fits in well... [Continue Reading]

Whatever reason you have for holding on to IBM Cognos 8.4 – “upgrading is too complicated/disruptive/painful/time-consuming/expensive” – the truth is this: building and following an upgrade plan makes the process smooth and the results impressive.
Join us on November 13 at either 5 AM, 12 Noon, or 10 PM ET for this one hour webcast and discover the truth about upgrading from an organization that’s done it successfully, using a... [Continue Reading]

Are you looking for information about the recommended upgrade workflow, the strategies, the best practices, and the tools needed to move to IBM Cognos BI 10?
If the answer is yes, consider the following videos to find new tips and techniques to make you feel confident with the Cognos BI upgrade process:
IBM Cognos BI 10 - Upgrade Workflow
IBM Cognos BI 10 - Basic Upgrade Strategies
... [Continue Reading]

Over the last few months, the Cognos Upgrade Central web pages have been revamped to make it easy to find up-to-date information about IBM Cognos upgrades. Consult Cognos Upgrade Central when upgrading from Cognos BI 8 or Cognos BI 10.1 to the latest Cognos BI release.
In addition to a new look that consolidates important information about the upgrade process, a number of new resources have been added to provide you with the latest information available. For example, you can find:
... [Continue Reading]

At this upcoming IOD , you can go through the Cognos upgrade process yourself by signing up to either one of these two workshops:
BBI-3323A: Cognos BI Upgrade Workshop (Tuesday November 5th, 10AM to 1PM)
BBI-3323B: Cognos BI Upgrade Workshop (Thursday November 7th, 10AM to 1PM)
The workshop is divided into three parts. In the first part, you will use Cognos Business Intelligence tools and take an inventory of your current Cognos 8 content and identify reports that have... [Continue Reading]

The following example is an abstract from the IBM Cognos Report Studio: Author Active Reports (V10.1) one-day training course, available in a classroom or online environment. If you would like to know more about this training course or other training courses, please visit the IBM Training Course Catalog .
You will create an active report with a data iterator control that interacts with a data deck to make use of the swiping gesture that allows the user to navigate between pages on an iPad tablet.
The iterator... [Continue Reading]

Submitted by Garima Bhatia, Tata Consultancy Services
The purpose of this technique is to pass the user id as a default value to textbox prompt and provide an option to modify it, which can be used to filter out the data in the report.
Report has been tested in Cognos 10.2
Steps
Open Report Studio using the GO Sales and Retailers package. Select List Report .
Create a Prompt Page and create a table with 2 rows.
Drag and drop a Value prompt in the first row.
Name the parameter as P_dummy .... [Continue Reading]

The Connect 2014 conference agenda is built with one objective in mind: offering value to each individual attendee. Our mission is to have you walk away having learned something you cannot learn anywhere else AND having learned something that you can put to use in your business setting immediately. Last year over 350 top-notch speakers—clients, partners, and industry experts—shared their business stories and technical expertise with thousands of attendees, resulting in the highest session ratings in the history of the conference.... [Continue Reading]

Still haven't committed to going to IOD this year? Perhaps you need a graphical presentation on why you need to go. Print it out and post it somewhere prominent. Or, use it for your screensaver or background. You never know what may result.

Whatever reason you have for holding on to IBM Cognos 8.4 – “upgrading is too complicated/disruptive/painful/time-consuming/expensive” – the truth is this: building and following an upgrade plan makes the process smooth and the results impressive.
View this one hour on-demand presentation and discover the truth about upgrading from an organization that’s done it successfully, using a thorough, well-executed plan.
First, you’ll hear from Louise McNicoll, an IBMer who has advised many upgrading... [Continue Reading]

Now's probably a good time to impress your boss. IBM now provides you with what you need to strut your stuff.
Browse, find and download visualizations from the extensible visualization community to quickly provide the best visual for your reporting needs.
On the AnalyticsZone you'll find both common and advanced visualizations, including heatmaps, treemaps, bubble, network, area, radar and gauge visualizations and so much more. Find just the right visualization fast by browsing the collection by visualization type.
... [Continue Reading]

IBM® Cognos® Mobile allows the mobile workforce to interact with information like never before - delivering relevant insight wherever they are. Users interact with trusted BI content through a rich and visual experience whether offline or online for uninterrupted productivity.
With a fresh new look and feel, Cognos Mobile’s native iPad application allows users to easily connect to multiple Cognos BI servers if required. Through a rich, visual and interactive experience, users can arrange content how they want to see it,... [Continue Reading]

The new IBM® Redbooks® publication - IBM Cognos Dynamic Query - explains how IBM Cognos® Business Intelligence (BI) administrators, authors, modelers, and power users can use the dynamic query layer effectively. It provides guidance for determining which technology within the dynamic query layer can best satisfy your business requirements. Administrators can learn how to tune the query service effectively and preferred practices for managing their business intelligence content.

IBM Cognos Business Intelligence 10.2.1 Fix Pack 1 is now available for download by supported customers.
Information about downloading IBM Cognos Business Intelligence 10.2.1 FP1 is available on the Cognos Business Intelligence 10.2.1 Fix Pack 1 .
Be advised that IBM Cognos Business Intelligence 10.2.1 FP1 requires report specifications to be upgraded.
Once a report spec has been upgraded for use with 10.2.1 FP1 it cannot be used with the original 10.2.1 release. Details may be found in the following TechNote -
... [Continue Reading]

Looking for something new? Here are some of the new product offerings from Business Analytics, and updates for your current products. Click the links to find more information.
To stay informed of Business Analytics news and releases use My Notifications and the @basupp Twitter feed.
New Products
Analytic Answers 1.1, a new Cloud offering
Announcement
Capacity Management Analytics 1.1
Announcement
Download information
Capacity Management... [Continue Reading]

IBM Cognos Disclosure Management is designed to teach accounting professionals to create, manage, and administer financial reports and workflows.
The following example is an abstract from the IBM Cognos Disclosure Management (v10.2) three-day training course, available in a classroom or online environment. If you would like to know more about this training course or other training courses, please visit the IBM Training Course Catalog .
You want to create an object hierarchy for your report. The hierarchy will... [Continue Reading]

The IBM Business Analytics Proven Practices team has been busy over the summer preparing new documents. Here are two recent documents that will be of interest to Supportlink readers. Remember, you can follow @basupp on Twitter and be notified whenever a new Proven Practices document is published.
IBM Business Analytics Proven Practices: Case Study - Migrating BO Reports to IBM Cognos BI without Universe Files
This document provides a technical summary of how to migrate SAP Business Objects (BO)... [Continue Reading]

While automation is commonplace throughout Finance, organizations still manually merge off-line spreadsheets (Excel), corporate sources (Data warehouses and Business Intelligence reports), and narratives (Word) together during their report production process.
Hear from Sherri Liao , EPM Advisory Practice Lead at The Hackett Group, as she presents how World Class organizations have focused their efforts for more efficient and effective reporting. Learn how your organization can rid itself of many common limitations with real time data... [Continue Reading]

With notes from Patrick O'Connor and Regina Joyce of the IBM Electronic Support Team
The IBM Support Portal will soon have a new look. You have been telling us what improvements you'd like to see in the IBM Support Portal. We've listened, and our new, simplified website design is coming soon.
The IBM Electronic Support Team has produced a two minute video introducing the new functionality that will soon be available in the IBM Support Portal.
You may view... [Continue Reading]

Submitted by Lisbeth Hansen, Program Manager, WW Support Communications and Client Intelligence
Improving the client experience is a priority for IBM. One of the keys to achieving this priority is listening.
Listening to our clients helps us innovate to increase your success and improve your client experience with IBM.
Our Client Experience Survey (formerly known as Loyalty Survey) is one important way that we listen to our clients. The Client Experience Survey for Business Analytics customers takes place in September and... [Continue Reading]

Submitted by Rhonda Jeshi, Software Development Engineer
Visualization is highlighted as an empowering technology by providing context to raw data that allows for the discovery of insight and facilitates action.
Different sets of data require different types of visualizations to provide maximum insight.
This capability allows for new visualization types to be brought into the BI system for use by authors in Cognos Report Studio.
The IBM Business Analytics Accelerated Value Program Solutions... [Continue Reading]

On August 28th a new Business Analytics Client Centre went live on the ibm.com website. The new design is focused around the Business Analytics product families that you, and your organization, know - be it Cognos, SPSS, OpenPages, Clarity, Algorithmics or Varicent.
After you select your product family, you can then select the information that you need from Support, Downloads, Training and Services and Purchases. There are also links for getting involved with communities and for a complete list of the most commonly... [Continue Reading]

Business Analytics Forum at Information On Demand 2013 is your best opportunity all year to take a giant leap toward making your organization (and you!) an analytics leader.
Start exploring content today with our Session Preview tool. This easy-to-use tool lets you view sessions and activities at the conference. Search for sessions by program, track and keyword, view the details and start your conference planning today!
Get all the details . Check out... [Continue Reading]

Submitted by Max Alvarez, Business Analytics Client Care
Some of us like picking up the phone to order a pizza and some of us like going online to submit the order. So which one is faster? Calling or online? The debate can go on forever, however, ordering online seems to be more convenient. With easy access to the internet via tablets and smart phones, most of us are constantly online. If you need support for your Business Analytics (BA) software, why not... [Continue Reading]

The IBM Electronic Support user experience team is currently recruiting clients to participate in usability testing of upcoming enhancements to the IBM Support Portal . We are driving significant simplification into our website and want your feedback on our current direction.
We are currently recruiting clients to participate in a user-centered design review in August.
These sessions are typically 1.5 hours in duration and are highly interactive discussions with the IBM user experience and design team.
... [Continue Reading]

My Notifications in the Support Portal is not a new feature.
But, unfortunately, it gets little of the spotlight. It's not flashy. It's not social or in any cloud that I know of.
The thing is, it works .
It's reliable. It's on your schedule. It knows your preferences. The bottom line is that It helps keep you informed as to what's happening with your Business Analytics products.
Not too sure what My Notifications can do? Here's the blurb from the IBM Support web site -
... [Continue Reading]

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